Flexible sentencing will help in Tennessee

OUR VIEW

When Attorney General Eric Holder called for sweeping changes to the nation's mandatory minimum prison sentencing policy, he could have had Tennessee specifically in mind because our prison situation is a textbook case of problems in the criminal justice system.

Note these figures from a Tennessean report last December:

? The state prison population in Tennessee has risen 4.5 percent in the past 10 years, and county and city jail populations have increased 42 percent. Prison and jail construction is nowhere near keeping up, nor is that likely to change without tax increases.

? Because of the inmate boom and because the state pays counties about $37 per day for each state inmate housed in local jails, the state Correction Department went $20 million over budget in 2012.

? Nine county jails lost their certification because of overcrowding from 2010 to 2012. The jails can continue to operate, but they run risk of their insurance becoming more expensive - another way that taxpayers will take a hit.

Tennessee penal institutions are overcrowded for the same reasons that Holder cited as a national problem: Since the federal government declared a war on drugs in the 1980s, populations have soared, having to take low-level and nonviolent drug offenders.

Perhaps to most Americans at the time, it seemed a good idea: Lock up the dopeheads and they'll have to clean up - and behind bars, they won't be able to expose our kids to drugs. But it hasn't worked out that way.

Nonviolent drug offenders have access to drugs in prison, and are exposed to violent criminals and gang practices. With few options to be rehabilitated, many of the drug offenders go back to drug using and dealing, or worse, as soon as their sentence ends.

And now, judges are themselves locked in - by mandatory minimum sentences for a range of drug crimes - and prisons are bursting at the seams and racking up astronomical costs that no one wants to pay.

In state prisons nationwide, there are about 225,000 people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. And it's not working. Even if it were stopping illegal drug trade, the system is not fairly applied.

As the nonprofit Sentencing Project has explained, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately represented among those convicted of drug crimes at the federal level.

In Tennessee, state officials seem to understand the urgency of the problem created by overcrowding and recidivism. Correction Commissioner Derrick Schofield has called for alternative sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders. Mental Health and Substance Abuse Commissioner Douglas Varney is establishing more drug courts such as the one in Davidson County to offer judicial supervision, treatment services and other incentives for addicted offenders who pose no threat to their communities - all of which are cheaper than incarceration, and that evidence-based studies have shown to get more offenders back into law-abiding lives and careers.

The job this state faces, however, is large. It will take convincing more Tennesseans that the lockup is not always the answer and ask them to be open to change. Attorney Justice Holder, and members of Congress including Sens. Rand Paul and Dick Durbin, have shone a spotlight on the matter. Now it's time for every community to support new methods that will actually work against crime as a way of life.

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Flexible sentencing will help in Tennessee

When Attorney General Eric Holder called for sweeping changes to the nation's mandatory minimum prison sentencing policy, he could have had Tennessee specifically in mind because our prison situation